Presentation of the article about the design and development of a cross-modal multi-located framework for cultural heritage. The paper was presented at the conference Built Heritage 2013, Monitoring Conservation Management, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, 18-20 November 2013.

1. Onna project:
a natural interaction installation and
mobile solution for cultural heritage
Gianpaolo D'Amico, Alberto Del Bimbo, Andrea Ferracani, Lea Landucci, Daniele Pezzatini1
Buil Heritage 2013, Monitoring Conservation Management, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, 18-20 November 2013

2. Introduction
Onna - Past, Present and Future is a solution for the valorization of
cultural heritage designed and implemented for the museum of Onna, a small
town close to l'Aquila, Italy.
This project was promoted by the non-profit organization Onna Onlus
and was developed as a partnership with Università degli Studi di Firenze MICC Media Integration and Communication Centre and RAI
- Radio Televisione Italiana.

3. Onna is a frazione of L'Aquila in
the Abruzzo region of central
Italy. It is situated in the
Apennine Mountain Range, 582
m (1,909 ft) above sea level. The
population is about 300 people.

4. Onna was completely destroyed during
the earthquake in 2009.

8. casa Onna & Infobox
a museum in which the life of Onna before the terrible
earthquake is described and presented to visitors

9. The problem
How to properly show the past events in this museum?
How to raise awareness of the efforts invested in the work of reconstruction
across the areas in and around the town?
How to give local citizens and visitors a clear and strong message of hope for the
future?
How to use new advanced technologies for the valorization of this cultural and
historical heritage?

10. Our solution
We developed a framework which provides a cross-modal and multi-located experience to
people.
In the Infobox visitors of the museum can interact with a natural interaction
installation and then discover information about the history of the earthquake via
multimedia contents. Their activity is tracked and stored by a user profiling system.
At the end of the visit they have the chance to activate a mobile application which
communicates via Internet to the user profiling system and shows suggested personalized
and geo-located in-depth information based on the actions performed during the session
with the interactive exhibit.

11. System architecture

12. indoor system

13. Natural Interaction module

15. A
map of Onna
B
C
content viewer
area related
navigation system
B
C

16. contents = stories
A large collection of information is showed in audio/video format to tell the stories of these last years
•
interviews with people who directly lived
those dramatic moments
•
•
images of Onna before and after the disaster
maps visualizing the altered geography of
some places in the area all around the town.

17. user profiling system
It fulfills two goals:
1.
to identify where the user is located with
respect to the two areas that comprise the
interactive environment (with an
experimental position detection module,
only in lab)
2.
to record the interactive session for each
detected user (natural interaction module)
in order to build a user profile of interest.
This profile of interest is used for content
filtering and interests targeting in the
mobile application developed as part of the
outdoor system.

18. outdoor system

19. mobile application
In order to enrich the visitors experience during their outdoor exploration of the town, a
cross-platform mobile application was developed with the aim to suggest points of interest
and offer additional related multimedia contents

21. Now
On April 6th 2013 the system was installed in the Infobox space in the new museum of
Onna, at the presence of the mayor of L’Aquila and other institutional representatives.

22. Conclusions
In this paper a proposal to enhance the
experience of visitors in a museum environment
was presented. Our solution consists of an
interactive installation based on a natural
interaction paradigm, a system to estimate each
visitor interest during the interaction with the
installation and an outdoor system based on a
mobile application. Thus a visitor can live a
multisensory, cross-modal and multi-located
experience discovering the history of a dramatic
event which caused some years ago the
devastation of the small town of Onna in Italy.
Contacts
gianpaolodamico.com
@gianpaolodamico
Credits
Photos and videos by Andrea Ferracani, Lea Landucci and Daniele Pezzatini